The Most Beautiful Thing of All
by protector91
Summary: Spoilers for the Season 5 premiere. One day she's infiltrating Hydra, then she's stranded on an alien planet, and now Simmons finds herself a slave in service of the Kree. She's definitely cursed. Simmons first experience as one of Kasius' slaves.
1. Enslavement

_I'm cursed. I'm definitely cursed,_ Simmons thinks as the Kree slaves paint part of her face and her lips gold.

At first she couldn't decide if she'd rather be on this space station or fighting for her life back on Maveth, but she decided that Maveth would be infinitely preferable. Being forced into submission by these things made her skin crawl way more than Hive ever did.

The paint is cold to the touch and the slaves are very meticulous with how they apply it to Simmons' skin. No doubt to avoid making any mistakes that might set Kasius off. Once the slaves finish painting and redressing Simmons, they spent the next few hours showing her how to act. It was a bit difficult at first for Simmons to follow them as she could not hear anything, but she caught on pretty quick. Following this brief lesson, Sinara, the Kree female Simmons guessed to be Kasius' right hand woman, took her and a few other slaves back to Kasius' chambers. Kasius begins speaking and Simmons wonders if he removed her ability to hear for breaking the rules and the others can hear him just fine.

"Jemma."

 _Did I just hear him?_ Simmons thinks.

"You look wonderful," he continues; voice mildly distorted.

 _Oh yeah. I definitely heard him,_ she thinks; skin crawling at his compliment. He mentions that guests are arriving and looks out the window.

 _Oh for crap's sake,_ Simmons mildly curses in her thoughts at the sight of a rather large ship coming into view.

"Proceed to the dining room," Kasius commands.

Simmons obeys. Her face a look of stoicism while her emotions raged inside demanding to be released. She stood at the foot of the dining room table where Kasius takes his seat. His right hand woman, his lover maybe, taking the first seat at the top right side of the table. An impressive feast sat before the group; a mixture of Earth and, Simmons guesses, Kree cuisine. It makes her wish even harder that she was back at the diner with Fitz finishing off that pie. Instead, she stands in silence while Kasius speaks with Sinara about something, but now Simmons can't hear a word they said. After a few more minutes pass, the two of them stand up and face the entrance to the dining room. Simmons faces the entrance too and takes a sudden gulp, nearly choking on her own spit.

Another alien, one with piercing eyes, dressed in gold platted armor, and towering over everyone, steps into the room. He is so muscular that Simmons thinks he could snap her neck with a simple slap. He also wears a gauntlet on his right hand that contained three beautifully glowing gems.

"Kneel before his excellency," Kasius orders. Simmons kneels in the position the others showed her earlier; arms folded, head pointed down at the floor, and her eyes open. "Lord Thanos. This is an unexpected pleasure. We are enriched by your presence and have prepared you this feast," Kasius greets.

Simmons steals a glance up and sees this Thanos smiling at Kasius' cliche riddled flattery.

 _Great, as if this room didn't have enough narcissists,_ she thinks.

She takes another quick look to her left and sees an alien woman standing beside Thanos. At least Simmons thinks she's an alien. The woman appears far more mechanical than biological. She directs her eyes back to the floor once Thanos begins to approach her and Kasius. The floor mildly shaking with each step he takes.

"This is not a social visit, Kasius." Thanos' voice sends a chill running up Simmons' spine. She steals another glance at Thanos and feels like she might faint from how imposing he is.

"Is there something wrong, my lord?" Kasius asks.

"Our ship detected several unregistered energy surges from a monolith. I traced the surges to this station," the woman beside Thanos reveals. Simmons notices Kasius' confident exterior falter for a quick moment and smiles in her mind at seeing him not being in control.

"If there has been unregistered monolith activity, I assure you, it is news to me and we will investigate it immediately," Kasius promises.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Thanos asks.

"Oh, um, yes of course, immediately," Kasius stumbles and turns to Sinara. "Go to the security room and check the cameras for any monolith activity. Report back the moment you find something."

"Nebula will accompany you," Thanos says.

It's a simple statement, but there is so much power behind it. Simmons can see why Kasius is uneasy. Nebula looks at Thanos with some contempt and he grins at her in return. One of the gems in his gauntlet glows brighter and Nebula's eyes turn completely black.

"Yes father," Nebula replies. The glow in the gem starts to die down and Simmons notices that in addition to the three glowing gems in Thanos' gauntlet, there are three more, but they are all cracked.

"Come with me," Simmons hears Sinara speak for the first time.

She expected her to sound like May from the way the alien warrior carried herself. However, there was a surprising nonchalance to her voice. Nebula leaves the room with Sinara and Simmons directs her gaze back to the floor.

 _Please don't find my friends, please don't find my friends,_ Simmons prays in her mind; silence overtaking her once more due to Kasius and Thanos moving to another part of the room. The uncomfortableness of the silence weighs down heavily on her, but she stays rooted to the floor for an untold amount of time. Not like she could do much else.

"Jemma," Kasius' distorted voice sounds from behind her. He places a hand on her shoulder and maybe it is her imagination, but it feels like the room's temperature just dropped several degrees. "Rise." Simmons obeys his command and observes that Thanos no longer occupies the rom; neither do the other servants. Kasius begins pacing around Simmons and she keeps her eyes focused on the floor.

"Jemma, when I first saw you and learned of your medical talents, I thought you might be a spy from Xandar, but now it all makes sense. Your clothes, your ignorance of the rules, the anomalies we found when analyzing your DNA and, well," he gets uncomfortably close to Jemma's neck, "your scent is certainly unique." Simmons fights back the tears she can feel welling up. She won't give this egomaniac the satisfaction of having anymore control over her than he already does.

"You're one of the people the foolish believers spoke of. A so called 'Agent' of Shield. I don't know how you managed to get a monolith to send you through time, but I couldn't be anymore pleased to stand in the presence of a relic of a time long past. A human born before the age of submission is truly one of the rarest and most beautiful things of all." Kasius reaches forward and caresses Simmons' cheek. She instinctively pulls her face away from his touch, but he only laughs.

 _Great. I'm just endearing myself further to him._

"Thanos won't be pleased when he finds out you're hiding me," Simmons threatens. She braces herself for Kasius to slap her or reprimand her in some way for speaking out of turn, but he only gives her an arrogantly smug grin.

"But he won't find out. Not when he has other 'Agents' he can find and kill," he says and walks behind Simmons again. "And I advise you not get any ideas about revealing yourself to him. Especially when I have this," he whispers and holds up the bug he used to take away Simmons' hearing to her mouth.

The thing scratches at her lips and she trembles at the sound of Kasius laughs. But she remains still as if she's alone in the room. Kasius retracts the bug from her mouth and dismisses Simmons back to her room. When she sits on her bed, she wants to yell, but instead lets out a breath she did not realizes she was holding.

 _How am I going to get out of this one?_ She wonders and stares out the window. Grateful she doesn't have a view of the destroyed Earth.

Her thoughts start to drift to Fitz and the life he must've lived in this timeline. She at least hopes he lived a full life and did not get killed when whatever catastrophe destroyed the Earth struck. Then she remembers the message he sent on the Postcard Deke had on him. 'Working on it', the card read. That's her Fitz. Always doing something. But this time she desperately wishes he wouldn't. She lies back on her bed and closes her eyes.

 _Fitz, wherever you are, please, please, just stay away. Let me come back to you for once._ _I love you._


	2. Beautiful

**A/N: I started writing this chapter before last week's episode, so expect some details to not line up. Anyway, hope you like this chapter. :)**

Simmons lies awake in her bed. Her face staring at the ceiling. She knows she needs all the rest she can get so she won't accidentally screw anything up while carrying out Kasius' orders, but sleep refuses to come. Not that it matters really. If her calculations from her week of servitude are correct, she should be receiving a wake up call any minute now. So she gets out of bed and makes it up.

Ensuring that there aren't any wrinkles in the sheets as she does so. Granted, Kasius apparently never set foot in the slaves' quarters, but she still felt compelled to make sure things looked presentable in the off chance the blue faced narcissist ever did pay her a visit. Right as she finished making up her bed, the alarm intended to wake her up sounded in the room. It ran for about fifteen seconds and then Simmons' world returned to complete silence. She takes her Kree robes from her drawer, puts them on, and sits at the foot of her bed. Five minutes later, another slave enters the room carrying a brush and gold paint. Simmons closes her eyes while the woman begins to paint her face; her mind still processing everything that has transpired.

Thanos and Neblua came and went and Kasius filled Simmons in on their search. Nebula and Sinara located the source of the energy surges, but as luck would have it, the energy released from Simmons and the others teleporting onto the station messed with the camera feed preventing them from seeing a clear picture. Since the group teleported into the restricted roach area, Sinara wrote the intruders off as likely being killed.

Simmons wondered if Sinara knew the truth about her. Kasius promised Thanos a thorough investigation in spite of this and Simmons remembered seeing him flinch when Thanos held his gauntlet up to his face. Again, seeing Kasius squirm even for just a moment put a smile on Simmons' face.

Speaking of her face, once she felt the brush leave her lips and the other slave place her hand on Simmons' shoulder to indicate she was finished, she handed Simmons the paint and brush and the two of them changed places on the bed. Now it was Simmons' turn to paint her face and lips gold. And like the other woman, Simmons carefully took her time. All those under Kasius' enslavement took great care to make sure even a speck of paint was not out of place. Because if it was, then the person with the out of place paint on their faces would be punished as Kasius' method of improving everyone's performances.

 _If only Daisy were here. She'd show that blue bastard a thing or two,_ Simmons thinks.

Truth be told, she doesn't even know if Daisy, Coulson, May, Mack, and Elena are alive. Kasius never let her leave his suites and he always kept a collected attitude around her meaning they were keeping a low profile and he hadn't found them, they were disrupting the station and he wouldn't let anyone know it was getting to him, or as she fears, they're all dead. Though if they were dead, he certainly would've bragged about it.

 _One longs for the days when one's biggest worries was being sucked out of an airplane,_ Simmons thinks and then refocuses on the task at hand.

She takes about twenty more minutes and when she's satisfied, she places her hand on the other woman's shoulder. They both stand up and approach Simmons' mirror to look themselves over. They give themselves nods of approval and leave the room. Kasius had already begun entertaining new guests, humanoid aliens with skin the color of gold, as Simmons entered the dining room. One of them has a smile that almost rivaled Kasius' smug grin.

Simmons once again pushes her thoughts of disgust and vengeance aside so she could properly focus. Things proceed normally for a while. Simmons served drinks that consisted of weird Kree drinks along with the occasional human beverage like martinis and even apple juice. Kasius seemed to have an odd affinity for the latter drink.

The gold woman meanwhile shot apprehensive glances at Simmons the entire time. She did her best to ignore them and the woman in general, until Kasius' distorted voice called her over. Simmons approached them with a tray of Pina Coladas and handed one to the gold woman. She took a long gulp of the drink; never breaking eye contact with Simmons. Simmons stared right back until she finished the whole thing. Simmons then took the glass back and started to walk away, but the woman grabbed Simmons' arm, nearly making her drop the tray in the process.

"Ayesha? Is there a problem?" Kasius asks the gold woman.

"This slave," Ayesha begins. "I see a look in her eyes that I haven't seen in a Terran in decades."

"And what look is that?"

"Defiance."

Kasius grins at this. "Yes, beautiful isn't it?"

"'Dangerous' is a word I prefer," Ayesha says and takes another drink from Simmons' tray.

"And that, my dear Ayesha," Kasius says walking behind Simmons, "is what makes her a beauty worth cultivating." He strokes Simmons' cheek again and her grip on the tray tightens considerably.

"Forgive me if I think she'll try to screw with you one day," Ayesha mutters in between sips.

"Ayesha, you may be an honored guest in my suites, but that does not give you the right to criticize my property," Kasius replies when suddenly a loud crash in the room breaks up the standoff.

They all look to the source of the noise; a young woman, barely 18 from the look of it, kneels over several broken glasses and the tray she just dropped. Her eyes widen in fear at Kasius' glare and she bends down to start to clean up the mess. On instinct, Simmons sets her tray aside and goes to the girl's side.

"Jemma. Exactly what do you think you are doing?" Kasius asks. Simmons grabs the girl's shoulder and pulls her up to her feet.

"Removing her from your sight. She's embarrassed you enough already. No reason to risk her continuing to do so trying to fix the mess she made," she replies; voice strong and face stoic.

"That is an excellent answer," he says while giving Ayesha a brief glance. Her demeanor is that of a pouty child. He calls over another slave to clean up the mess and Simmons leads the girl back to her quarters; world returning to silence once she is no longer in the same vicinity as Kasius.

She sits her down on her bed and notices that tears are already staining her face and making her make up run. Simmons grabs a cloth on her bedside table and begins to wipe the girl's face.

"I'm sorry about what I said," Simmon says or at least hopes she properly says. "I just needed to get you away from Kasius before he did who knows what…can you even hear me?" Simmons asks.

The girl nods and says something that Simmons can't hear, but can tell from reading her lips was 'can you hear me'.

Simmons shakes her head. She goes back to her bedside table and pulls out a small tablet from it. Kasius left it in her room to communicate with the other slaves, but she never felt much incentive to use it before now due to the others not being all that talkative.

Simmons places her hand on the tablet turning it on and a screen projects in front of the two of them. Simmons presses a few keys on the tablet typing out the following message:

 **My name is Jemma Simmons. What's yours?**

She hands the girl the tablet and she types out a reply.

 **Abby. Thank you so much for helping me back there.**

 **It was my pleasure. Here, let me see if I can fix some of your make up.**

Simmons hands Abby the tablet and pulls some gold paint out of her drawer. She wipes away the paint on Abby's lips and some of the other run make up before starting to fix it the best she could. While she does, Abby types a little more on the tablet.

 **You're different from the other slaves. I've never seen one try to help another.**

"Let's just say it's a trait I picked up from my friends. Actually, they're more than my friends. They're my family."

 **What happened to them?**

"I don't know. I haven't seen them since I was taken. All I can do is hope for the best." Abby puts the tablet down after she says this and lets Simmons continue her work on her face. "And there we go." Simmons takes Abby to her mirror to look herself over. "Good as new," Simmons compliments and Abby gives her a half smile. She holds the tablet back up and types something else.

 **Thank you, Jemma. Is it alright if I ask you something?**

Simmons nods her head.

 **I heard Kasius talk about you being from a time before submission. A time when the Earth actually stood. What was it like?**

Simmons takes the tablet back and types:

 **Beautiful. Just beautiful. It's something I took for granted because I always believed that the world would keep spinning. Looks like I was wrong.**

Abby starts to get somber after reading this, so Simmons quickly changes the subject.

 **Your parents. Are they with you here?**

Abby's head droops down and she shakes it before taking back the tablet.

 **Kasius promised they'd be safe if I came up here, but then a renewal happened. Kasius even claimed my father killed my mother. I wish I was as brave as you, so I could**

The text stops in its track and Simmons realizes that Abby started crying again. Simmons leans over and gently hugs Abby; the young girl hugging her much tighter in return.

"Things will get better soon. I promise," Simmons whispers.


End file.
